It's been two decades since I shared my world with an animal. As a young man I was too itinerant to keep a pet and certainly too lazy. I had painstakingly crafted a life of no responsibility, and there was no room in it for fuzzy things and their fuzzy little needs. So I scratched the neighbor's cat behind the ears and left it at that.

Now a fuzzy thing has entered my world, and I can only look back and pity my younger self. For life is not quite complete until you walk into the bathroom and find a cat in the tub, beseeching you with innocent, unblinking eyes to please turn on the faucet because licking from the spigot is so much better than drinking from that boring old bowl in the kitchen.